


honey sweet and henbane sour

by LMD18



Category: Cadfael Chronicles - Ellis Peters
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Case Fic, Hogwarts Founders Era, M/M, Misuse of Potions, Murder Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:46:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26179711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LMD18/pseuds/LMD18
Summary: In the summer of 1038, the isolated, peaceful world of Hogwarts is disrupted by an unexpected arrival - and an attack on one of the teachers.Herbology Master Cadfael investigates.Dark wizard (and prime suspect) Hugh Beringar proves a distraction.
Relationships: Hugh Beringar/Brother Cadfael
Comments: 11
Kudos: 9
Collections: Alternate Universe Exchange 2020





	honey sweet and henbane sour

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DoreyG](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/gifts).



Morning finds the ship still at anchor in the loch.

She arrived the previous evening, in the midst of a summer storm that lashed windows and felled trees and kept even Hogwarts' more adventurous students indoors. No one was there to see her rise from the waters, and no one was there to welcome her passenger when he came to the gates. 

So he let himself in, through hefty physical locks and seven layers of protective charms.

And that was how Salazar Slytherin's apprentice arrived at Hogwarts.

That young man's instinct for the dramatic can't be faulted, Cadfael thinks as he makes his way down to the Great Lake with what appears to be half the inhabitants of Hogwarts. Someone less concerned with it might have stayed on the ship for the night and approached the castle in the morning light. Hugh Beringar strolled into the Great Hall as the dinner plates were being cleared away, not a bead of water on him, and announced his identity to the room like an alchemist adding fire to black powder. With equally predictable results. 

But the storm has passed. The morning sky above him is as clear and blue as Cadfael has ever seen, and it's reflected in the still waters of the loch. If he squints, he can make his imagination turn the looming rocky hills and dark forest crowding around it into a Mediterranean port city, and can almost make himself believe that the ship isn't appallingly out of place. Cadfael's seen many ships like her in his day, both in the midland sea and at every point along the trade routes from Al Basrah to Guangzhou, and he looks on her light lines and long yards with a fondness that's part nostalgia, part sheer pleasure in something beautiful.

Her crew have been quick to set up their wares, and are gathering a crowd of willing customers. Not everyone is happy about it; the Transfigurations Master Robert Pennant sweeps past Cadfael, puffed up with fine straight-backed disapproval, and Cadfael wonders what his plan is. He suspects the sailors won't be easily intimidated.

Not by Robert anyway. A long tentacle feels its way along the side of the ship, one of the lake's squid coming to greet her. Cadfael sighs and pulls out his wand—

And a screech splits the air. Followed by another, and another, and another, and until they're blending into each other in a rolling mass of sound. 

The children cluster together in little House-based groups, the older ones drawing their wands, and look to the teachers for instructions. Robert's glad to give them. "Remain here. You as well," he snaps at the boat crew. Probably for the best. The tenor of the Caterwauling Charm means it's one from inside. Somewhere amongst the chaotic labyrinth of towers and tunnels and halls and connected and unconnected buildings of Hogwarts, someone — or something — has gone somewhere they shouldn't.

The charm recognises Cadfael as a teacher. " _Scribe'sTowerScribe'sTowerScribe'sTower,_ " it screams, as he casts lightening charms on his feet and runs.

Cadfael has never had reason to go inside the Scribe's Tower — as far as he knows, no one ever does. He thinks even the house-elves give it a wide berth. Other buildings crowd around it — a storage barn, one recently-detached wing of the guest house, the kennel of Master Gilbert's hellhound-like hunting dogs, who are howling fit to wake the dead — but the magic that tries to mould each new addition to Hogwarts into part of a greater whole has not touched it. It remains apart, its only entrance or exit a flight of rickety steps leading to one small door — which now stands open.

As he reaches the tower, he finds himself outpaced by Robert, who sweeps up the stairs before him, robes billowing like the wings of a bat. Lady Rowena arrives after him, perched primly on her broomstick. She stops the Caterwauling Charm with an impatient wave of her hand, but as they go through the door together, Cadfael takes in the scene inside with his ears still ringing.

He sees the man on the floor, his clothes still smoking and his skin cracked and blackened, and Edmund the infirmarer on his knees beside him, silhouetted against the black maw of a fireplace — one that has not seen a fire in many years. And as he quickly makes his way to Edmund, he sees the group of wizards standing off to side, one surrounded by three.

There are scorch marks on one of the columns, a whole chunk blown out of another. The residue of magic in the air makes the hair on Cadfael's arms prickle. And Hugh Beringar's narrow, sharp-boned face wears the same expression it had the evening before, when he stood before a hall full of witches and wizards and dared them to turn him out into the rain. He is no taller than Cadfael, and has none of his square, solid build — surrounded by Robert, Gilbert Prestcote and Godric Gryffindor, who despite his advancing years and white hair is still a great bear of a man, he should look small, some out-of-his-depth youth. 

He does not. His cropped-short black hair is ruffled, he has dust on his robes, his wand is in Godric's hands, he cradles his arm to his body in a way that honestly suggests an injury — and his easy, insolent confidence isn't dimmed in the slightest.

"Any more attempts to break into my mind will only embarrass us both," he says to Robert, as calm as you like in the face of that wizard's spluttering rage.

Cadfael crouches beside Edmund. "He's alive?"

"Barely. Miraculously. This curse should kill anyone it touches." Edmund's kindly face twists, and he shoots a quick glance at Beringar. "It is no spell for a duel."

"Truly it isn't," Beringar agrees solemnly.

"You say that as if this is not your work," Gilbert growls.

"Because it isn't. Your injuries are my work, and I'll claim those gladly. Him I did not touch."

Cadfael notices a wand by his feet. The unconscious wizard's? He picks it up. It's chestnut, lavishly carved and whip-like in its flexibility in his hand. " _Prior Incantato_." A ghostly black mist pours from the wand, fire crackling within it.

"His enemy turned his own spell back on him?" Godric reaches out, takes the wand. Wandlore is an interest of his, and Cadfael suspects he knows the particulars of every wand in the castle. But it's Gilbert who identifies it.

"Is that Corbière's?"

Hugh Beringar's face doesn't show a flicker of recognition at the name. He produces more of a reaction when a house-elf appears with the old Pensieve that usually sits in Rowena's study. Triumph, if Cadfael is reading him correctly, crosses his face, quickly stifled. 

"Forgive me," Gilbert says, "I took the liberty of ordering it brought here."

Rowena raises one fine eyebrow, then transfigures a piece of rock into a table and relieves the elf of his burden with a flick of her wand. "Thank you, Figgy. I appreciate your help." The silvery liquids inside the Pensieve shift and shimmer as she sets it down. "Very well, Gilbert — show us what you saw."

Edmund casts a floating charm on Ivo Corbière's still form. "I'll take him to the Infirmary." Cadfael moves to accompany him. "I don't need any help right at this moment. Please, Cadfael, stay here. Indulge your curiosity," he adds, not unkindly. 

So Cadfael does. He watches Gilbert add his memory to the Pensieve, and joins the others in stepping into it.

His first thought is that it's loud — as Gilbert charges over the threshold, into the tower, the Caterwauling Charm triggers at deafening pitch. And it's _dark_. Even the most awkwardly positioned windows in Hogwarts are spelled to catch light, but the ones on this floor of the tower are thick with dust, set back into alcoves, and in places even blocked by columns supporting the floor of the rooms above. The only light in the large, sparsely furnished room is a bobbing green globe floating by Hugh Beringar as he crouches by Ivo's crumpled body, and the morning sun flooding through the door behind Gilbert, making him hard to see clearly.

Cadfael doesn't know if Gilbert ever intended to give Beringar a verbal challenge, but he doesn't get the chance. That young man casts a hex before he even looks at who he's facing. 

The duel is short and vicious. And neither wizard, Cadfael thinks, fights to his full ability. Gilbert batters Beringar with spell after spell, allowing himself to become predictable, with no sign that he intends to use that or turn it against his opponent. And Beringar stands his ground, barely shifting his balance as he blocks and turns aside each hex and curse. In Cadfael's experience, wizards of his size and agility run to quick-footed and impossible to pin down in a duel. Perhaps he is more inexperienced than he appears. 

Or perhaps he has reason not to move.

The man on the floor stops breathing. Cadfael can't hear it over the Caterwauling Charm, but he sees Beringar's reaction. He drops back down into a crouch, lifting an arm as though the shield charm he wandlessly summons is a cloak to be ducked beneath in the snow. And as Gilbert's hex shatters it, Beringar touches his wand to the burned man's chest. A great shudder runs through him, he visibly gasps in air… and Beringar lashes out with his wand.

The spell shakes the very stones of the tower, raises dust from the floor and sets it burning in tiny, fleeting pin points of fire. Gilbert's shield charm is like paper to it; he's unconscious even before he's slammed unceremoniously into the wall, a big, strong man resembling a child's cast-aside doll.

As the memory ends, Beringar catches Cadfael's eye and gives him a loose shrug.

"And that's when you arrived," he says to Godric, and holds out his hand in a silent demand for his wand. "Let me show you what happened before that."

Cadfael looks at Beringar thoughtfully as he pulls the silvery strands of memory from his forehead. 

There is a form of the Shield Charm that is much loved by those wizards also fond of their swords. It is cast wandlessly, yes, but it works by channelling the magic into and through the sword, rather than trying to shape it through pure will. Cadfael himself has had very little use for it, being of the mind that in a fight, any available cover was there to be used, not scorned while he stood facing every spell. And he's never seen anyone use it with a body part in lieu of a weapon, but —

"Please show me your arm," he says, as Godric, Rowena and Robert gather around the Pensieve. Gilbert frowns at him but doesn't say anything, just watches carefully as Beringar lets Cadfael take hold of his arm.

"Don't you want to see more of the show?" he asks, his voice light and amused.

"Why don't you tell me what I'd see?"

The skin on the outside of his forearm — where he took the remnants of Gilbert's hex — is grey and hard to touch, a layer of cold stone on warm living flesh, but as Cadfael pushes up his sleeve, he sees Beringar's entire arm is red and mottled, new bruises forming before Cadfael's eyes. "That spell is not intended to be used so," he says mildly, and sets about reversing the hex and healing the spell damage. "But then you needed your wand for something else. Edmund thinks ill of you right now; would you like me to tell him you're the reason his patient still lives?"

"He is not the first person to think badly of me." The others turn from the Pensieve. "I don't think you're missing much, but who knows, perhaps you would like to see me playing with the dogs like a child? Or running in here like a fool when I heard the sound of fighting? It wasn't very subtle and cunning of me, I apologise if I don't live up to the stereotype."

"And Ivo was already hurt?"

It is Rowena that answers. "It appears so. However, you did attack Gilbert, child. I will save any apologies until it can be proved your presence so close to this tower was merely an unfortunate coincidence. Apologies to you, at least — we will owe your Muggles some right away, since your ship will have to remain in the loch until we can let you leave." 

"They're not my Muggles," Beringar says, "and it's not my ship. Yusuf will leave tomorrow evening whether I'm on board or not. Possibly sooner, if the weather turns bad again."

Silence descends on the room. Cadfael concentrates on his healing spells and tries not to smile.

"Am I to understand that you enchanted the boat," Robert says eventually, "so Muggles can use it?"

"The charms will only last for three more voyages." Surely Beringar can't be as oblivious to the change in atmosphere as he sounds?

"Three?" Godric repeats, somewhat weakly. "Surely Salazar would not approve of this use of your power?" The hope in his voice is painful to hear.

"Surely an apprentice should be his own man," Cadfael says, "not merely the mirror of his master?" He finishes his work, and lets the sleeve drop down over smooth, unmarred skin. Beringar nods his thanks. This close, his eyes are as black as the Northumbrian jet Madam Avice likes to wear, and just as opaque. They glitter as he smiles, and Cadfael still can't tell what he's thinking. 

Godric laughs. "You will find very few great wizards to agree with you, Cadfael," he says ruefully. "Salazar least of all I think."

*

Cadfael trudges into the potions classroom. This is not his domain; while he has some significant skill in potions making, he doesn't teach it, and he greatly prefers his warm, heady-scented greenhouses to this cold dark dungeon with its dramatically dribbling candles, dead things in jars and anatomically dubious medical illustrations on the walls. The cold and dark is perhaps a good default state for a potions workshop, where light and temperature often need to be manipulated to best effect, but the rest? Pure dramatics. Ivo Corbière, Hogwarts's newest Potions Master, is a showman.

Cadfael is not. He hopes this morning's students will not be too disappointed with their temporary teacher. The afternoon's classes will get Rowena, and Cadfael will get to flee back to his Herbology classes.

But for now, he has to decide what potion to make — all while ignoring a very definite source of distraction.

Hugh Beringar peers at the jars. "What potion uses Dugbog parts?"

"They're for ambience, not use," Cadfael says. He watches Beringar move around the classroom, opening cupboards, poking and sniffing at the more dramatic 'potions ingredients', flicking through Ivo's books, and is amused. One of Cadfael's greatest failings is his curiosity. It seems like they might share that in common.

Oh, Cadfael suspects that he's looking for something in particular, but his interest in everything else seems genuine enough.

"Ambience?" Beringar finds Ivo's pride and joy astronomical model and sets it into motion with his finger. Points of light in the patterns of the constellations move across the walls. On the wall, a painting of a woman partially — and painfully — transformed into a wolf waves at him cheerfully and he waves back.

"Ivo claims that it's important," Cadfael says. "Did you ever meet him before last night?"

"Never. Our introduction last night was cursory enough. Why?"

"He is a great admirer of Salazar Slytherin."

"Many witches and wizards are," Beringar says blithely, and tries the drawer of Ivo's desk. It's locked.

"He studied here after your master left, but he sometimes speaks as if he's met him face to face. Worked with him, perhaps?"

"In a past life, perhaps! Your Master Ivo looked not so many years older than me, and my master has very little respect for any wizard under sixty. Though, to be completely fair, he also has very little respect for any _over_ sixty."

"And for you?"

"My master took me on for the same reason any older wizard takes on an apprentice — to fetch and carry and chop potions ingredients and be impressed by his knowledge and take care of his guests when he has them." Beringar flashes a smile, innocent and conspiratorial all at once. "I am a human house-elf, nothing more." 

You are bright and sharp, Cadfael thinks. And I do not trust you in the slightest.

"Thank you for this. I hope you didn't mind me inviting myself along to your class? I was always terrible at potions."

"And you wanted to see the workplace of the man whose life you saved," Cadfael says placidly. "It's understandable." Beringar's eyes narrow slightly. "And, let me see — you believe something else is going to happen, you want an alibi for when it inevitably does, and you believe that using one of the very few Muggle-born teachers in the school for it will show off your tolerance to Godric, thereby killing two birds with one stone." 

"My 'tolerance'?"

That's the only thing he wants to dispute? "You dislike the term?"

"It suggests there's something that needs tolerating," Beringar says, calm as you like. That calm cracks as he sees Cadfael's smile. Interesting. "And I'm not saying that as some idealistic child. Don't insult me. I'm _Norman_. Both my youngest brother and the Malfoy boy are sworn companions to young Duke William, who is very much a Muggle, even if he might wish differently. My father lives in a tower like his neighbours, he keeps Muggle men-at-arms, I trained in swordplay and horsemanship as well as magic, and so did his half-blood bastards and the local Muggle-borns he brought to the manor to be raised alongside me. Power is power, it doesn't matter where it comes from."

They have company, Cadfael realises as he pulls his thoughts together to reply. Ivo's advanced class crowd around the open door, the boldest peering through.

"Come in and be seated."

The students come into the room in a rush of bodies and a clamour of conversation, Wizard's Latin mixed with a babble of other languages. The teachers hail from places as nearby as Strathclyde and as far afield as Constantinople, and so too do the students. Hogwarts will take any child who wishes to come.

Godith Adeney is one of the first into the room and one of the last to be seated. She frowns at Beringar, who looks back at her, twinkle-eyed and challenging, all that intensity casually locked back away.

"I don't care where you've been or what you've learned," she says eventually. "I'm not afraid of you."

"I'm glad to hear it." Beringar says. "We played together as children," he explains to Cadfael.

"But I still want to hit you when you smirk at me like that."

"You're a witch, Godith," Cadfael says mildly, and offers her parchment to pass out, "you have a wand and the ability to use it. May I suggest the Dancing Feet Spell?"

"Betrayed," Beringar murmurs. He raises his eyebrows as Cadfael takes his shoulders and steers him to the workbench behind him.

"If you wish to sit in this lesson, you can make yourself useful."

"I wasn't lying to you. I am bad at potions."

"And I'm bad at teaching them. Perhaps we will both learn something today."

*

Plants and potions — as a little boy roaming the woods and mountains around Trefriw, they were the first outlet for Cadfael's magic, guided by the knowledge of old Mistress Mair. When he set out to explore the world, he learned to carve runes and paint talismans and wave a wand, but plants and potions are still what magic means to him, what he always comes back to — what he accidently gathered enough knowledge on, through all his years of travelling, to be invited to teach at Hogwarts. 

Passing on that knowledge is a delight. And he might not be Ivo Corbière, with his golden hair and fine manner, but he holds the attention of the class with ease.

Hugh Beringar's attention, too, he notices with amusement.

But, then, they are making a love potion of sorts.

"The outcome of this stage will depend on two separate decisions — your choice of flowers and your choice of thread to bind them. There are no wrong choices, but bluebells and a woollen yarn, say, offer something different to jasmine and linen. Or, indeed, henbane and catgut, but I don't recommend that combination. You are offering the potion an idea of what you find appealing, remember." 

"I bought silk thread from the Muggle merchants," Godith says. "I'll use that."

"Silk is a good choice of thread for most magical purposes," Cadfael says. And for himself, he will always prefer wool. "It has a… resonance all its own."

"That's a very polite way of describing it," says a cool, light voice behind him. "My master calls it the touch of death." Every person in the class turns to look at Beringar. His gaze meets Cadfael's and refuses to leave it.

"Take away my pleasure in silk and I will hex you," Godith says.

"I won't try to. After all, death can be very useful to a wizard. Don't you agree, Master Cadfael?"

"I can't disagree." The word 'useful' makes no moral judgement. And neither does magic itself. To some wizards, the plant sacrificed for its roots, the silkworm for thread and the human for blood are separated by degree, not kind. Cadfael isn't one of them, but he suspects Beringar is. "But depending on the death, I can disapprove." Beringar produces a smile for that, lopsided and knowing, and Cadfael notices most of the girls and some of the boys starting to stare. "I think we come from very different magical traditions." 

"Perhaps. But that's the great draw of this school, isn't it? The Great Experiment? To bring experts from many disciplines and traditions together into one place, so young witches and wizards can learn from all of them? Rather than their parents choosing a master for them who might be completely unsuited to their personality and magic?"

"You speak like such a pureblood." A rich pureblood, at that. 

"And you say that so kindly, like it's an affliction I should be pitied for." Beringar widens his eyes in mock affront, laughter in his voice. And Cadfael smiles, helpless against both.

"Make a posy of your chosen flowers—"

"Why are you standing for this?" Cadfael, disturbed in both his instructions and his contemplation of Beringar's laughing black eyes, turns to face the interruption. Young Jerome is on his feet, glaring at him furiously, which is… unusual. Jerome is Robert's particular favourite, but he has always delivered fawning obedience to all the masters — until now. He lifts a shaking finger, puffs himself up. "He is talking about the _Dark Arts_! He's insinuating that the Dark Arts belong in the great cauldron of ideas that is Hogwarts! And he's _seducing_ you! I know it's hard for a Muggle to catch these things—" 

Cadfael feels the temperature in the room change. The shadows become deeper, the air heavier. Some of the students are shocked and horrified, but more are watching him, not hostile but curious to see what he'll do — and fearful what will happen if he does nothing. Frost is thick on the workbench, crackling over the floor and the walls; Hugh Beringar slips off his stool, wand in his hand. But Cadfael's eyes fall on Edwy and Edwin at the workbench behind Jerome's, younger than most of the others in this class but naturally talented and unnervingly reckless, the two of them having such a high spirited discussion in such low voices…

Jerome turns on them. "Shut up! Why are you always so noisy! Why are you always causing so much trouble?" He snatches up his wand. " _Silenc_ —" Edwin catches hold of his wand arm, Edwy claps his hand over his mouth, and as Jerome wrenches himself free, Cadfael sweeps down on them.

"You know if you weren't such a complete bore all the time we wouldn't keep picking you to test these things on." Edwy slaps his hand over his own mouth. A giggle escapes.

"I take it this is transferable?" Cadfael says dryly.

"Looks like it!" Edwin says gleefully. "We were calling it the Loose Lips Curse, because it makes you say what you really want to say, but it seems like it makes you do what you want too so we might have to change the name."

Hugh laughs and puts down his wand. Seventeen students relax at the same time. "How do you punish children here? Do you feed them to the squid?"

"The squid don't eat people," Edwin says.

"How do they feel about people transfigured into frogs?"

Jerome whirls around, and Cadfael sees the real fear in his eyes. He doesn't have time to berate himself for not paying more attention, the only thing he can do is flick out his wand as Jerome's slashes through the air, too big and wild a gesture for duelling. " _Evanes_ —" The incantation ends in a squeak as Cadfael's binding ropes snap around him, tugging his wand arm down against his side, saving his life.

Beringar stands in front of his workbench, wandless and completely relaxed. The air pressure eases and the frost starts to melt. "Godric said you were good at duelling." He grins, starts to stroll over. "Thank you for protecting me."

"Was it you I was protecting?"

"Stay away! You foul, Dark—"

Cadfael casts a quick silencing spell, and meets Beringar's startled gaze with his own steady one. "Jerome has embarrassed himself enough," he says. "Edwy, Edwin, take him with you to the Infirmary and Master Edmund. Tell Edmund all about this hex."

"It's not a hex, it's a potion." 

"With a hex in it," Edwin adds.

" _Go_ , before _I_ turn you into frogs."

*

"If you were to join this school as a master," Cadfael says, as Beringar joins him in the after class ritual of vanishing spoiled potions and collecting together unused ingredients, "you would have to refrain from turning children into frogs."

"Who says I want to?" Beringar flashes a wolfish grin at him. "And what would I teach?"

"I'm told your master taught an overview of the Dark Arts and how to defend against them. All the time I've been here, Godric has wanted to revive the class, but finding the right witch or wizard to teach it has been difficult."

"I can see how it would be." Beringar's long fingers play with the posy Cadfael made as part of his potions demonstration — jasmine bound in wool. He makes a surprised noise as it comes apart in his hand. 

Cadfael takes the wool from him. "It was a quick release knot; I'll use this again. 'The Great Experiment' — that is how Rowena described the school to me too, when she offered me this post."

"I think anything Lady Rowena was going to offer me went up in flames with Master Ivo."

"I feel that does depend on if you were the one to attack him," Cadfael says dryly. "And on what other deeds you might be planning."

Beringar laughs at that, and goes back to his clearing up. 

The day remains fair and bright, and Beringar remains stuck to his side. At lunch they collect apples and chunks of bread and cheese and cups of gooseberry cider and sit on the half-formed walkway growing between the Great Hall and the new Astronomy Tower, looking out over the ever-changing castle. And beyond — they're high enough to see over the curtain wall, and the Great Lake is clear to view. Cadfael is caught casting an unwary look of longing at the ship at anchor there, and finds himself telling Beringar something of his travels.

He tries not to be too warmed by Hugh's open, ungrudging interest. He _is_ seducing me, he thinks, amused.

A small, steady voice breaks through his thoughts. "Master Cadfael?"

He looks up at a small sandy-haired boy who is a living, breathing example of why Hogwarts is needed. Not all Muggle-born witches and wizards are fortunate enough to find a teacher and protector; young Mark would've died in the gutter — or worse, much worse — if he hadn't been found and brought here, and a good little talent and kind heart would have been lost to the world.

"Mistress Helga wants to see you." He shoots a wide-eyed, mistrustful look at Beringar. Like a mouse facing a serpent. "Alone."

Beringar sprawls back against the warm stone and stretches comfortably. "Go, go," he says, closing his eyes, "if you trust me to stay here, alone and unwatched."

"I didn't choose to be your watcher," Cadfael points out. Mark shifts uncomfortably. If he could take hold of Cadfael's hand and pull him away physically, he surely would. Instead he has to wait for Cadfael to move, and has to hold his tongue until they're out of earshot.

"She awaits you at the Scribe's Tower," he says, in the most ostentatious whisper ever. Cadfael smiles.

"Thank you," he says solemnly. His travels didn't leave him much time to take an apprentice, but if he had, he thinks he would have liked one like Mark. He's honest and loyal — and doesn't like thinking ill of people. Which is clearly giving him difficulties now. "Is something wrong?"

Mark shakes his head — and lasts all of a minute before he bursts. "I don't listen to gossip." The words all but join together, they come out so fast.

"But?"

"But Yves said —"

Cadfael waits. "Let me make a guess," he says eventually. "Yves told you that all Norman wizards practice the Dark Arts." Of course, so do a lot of Angevin witches and wizards, Yves's family possibly amongst them. But we always judge our neighbour harder than ourselves.

"No! I mean, he has said that, in the past, but…" He braces himself and plunges on. "He said that Salazar Slytherin could transfer his soul into the body of another, and that if he picked an apprentice so powerful — and who has the same build and colouring as he did as a youth — it was for only one reason."

Well, this was not quite what Cadfael was expecting.

"I've heard the stories," Mark says. "Some of the purebloods tell them like they're jokes — all the things that will make Salazar Slytherin return to Hogwarts, from speaking ill of Arithmancy to courting a Muggle-born, and all the things he'll do when he returns. I… don't want him to return. If he has…"

"He has not." Cadfael puts as much authority as he can into his voice, and Mark seems comforted by it at least. "And he will not. Tell Yves it is the wrong time of year for ghost stories." 

"He is beautiful," Mark says wistfully as they approach the Scribe's Tower.

"Who? Yves?"

"No!" He turns quite red. "It seems unfair," he mumbles, "for one person to have so many gifts."

"Better for him to be a legendary wizard wearing stolen flesh?" 

That prompts a rueful smile. "You make it sound ridiculous."

And yet, not ridiculous enough. The world is full of horrors as well as wonders, Cadfael knows that well. He only hopes that Hugh Beringar is the latter.

*

"You know how children are," Helga says cheerfully. "The scarier the tale, the more they enjoy it."

Cadfael steps into the next alcove, his revealing spells doing nothing but raising dust. But there has to be something to find. He saw _something_ in the flashes of light from the duel, some brief distortion in the air that could be irrelevant, could have so many causes, but he needs to follow it up for his own piece of mind. And he's grateful to Helga for allowing him the chance to. But still —

"Mark did not enjoy it. And I suspect many of the other Muggle-born students feel the same way. Your friend has been turned into a monster to frighten children."

"Honestly, I think that would amuse him. Is that terrible? And so would his apprentice causing such a great stir."

There. A sparkle in the air, quickly fading, the remnants of a Disillusionment Charm. Someone stood here, hidden by the charm, for long enough to leave a mark. They must have been gone from this space before the curses really began flying, or they would have been hit by a stray spell or forced to betray themselves with a Shield Charm — but there's no sign of any Disillusionment Charm being used beyond this one point. How did they get away unseen?

Cadfael lights up his wand and sweeps the narrow beam of light back and forth methodically. 

"You don't think he did this, do you, Cadfael?"

"You don't," he replies wryly, "or you wouldn't have allowed me back in here." The light glitters off metal, and he picks up a tiny trinket, melted beyond recognition. Casting Scarpin's Revelaspell gains him nothing but fragments of unknown spells and numbers melting into the air. He sends it over to Helga with a flick of his wand, and she examines it with interest.

"I like the boy," she says brightly. Hopefully. "I think he'll be a credit to his master."

Cadfael doesn't say anything, just continues with his search.

He arrived at Hogwarts barely months after Slytherin left it, and though he has never met the man, he feels like his presence lingers around every corner, in every interaction Helga, Godric and Rowena have with each other. 

Cadfael has touched the world lightly. Oh, true, he's had many friends and many lovers, but he and they parted ways with very little pain on either side, leaving behind nothing but happy memories. Helga, Godric, Salazar and Rowena had a very different type of relationship. The four grew together like trees in a copse, and uprooting one ripped pieces from all the others. 

And if those wounds had healed at all, he thinks Beringar's arrival has torn them right open.

His fingers brush up against something trapped in the rusted-up hinge of a window shutter. He gently works it free, and finds himself with a surprisingly large scrap of paper, the size of his palm when he unfolds it. A single petal springs free, iridescent in his wand light, and he catches it before it can fall to the floor. 

"That's so lovely!" Helga moves towards him, and as her robes sweep over a certain spot on the floor, the whole room… shifts. The fire roars to life, the dust and cobwebs fade away — and high in the ceiling a trapdoor appears. Liquid silver slides from holes in the floor, blossoming into an ornate spiral staircase.

"What do you keep up there?" Cadfael can't help but ask as she steps away and the stairs melt back into the floor and the room grows dim and dirty again.

Helga smiles at him, dimples appearing in her cheeks. "You could call them the Scribe of Scribe's Tower," she says. "And, be reassured, it's still there. And there was no one hiding up there yesterday — Rowena checked. Now, show me what other exciting clues you've found…"

She falls silent as Cadfael freezes and lifts a finger to his lips. 

He casts a Supersensory Charm on himself, and is given a feeling of movement to go with another barely-there creak from the stairs outside the open door.

"May I do that later?" he asks, and she laughs and hands him the melted trinket.

"I'll follow your detective work with interest."

*

Naturally there is no sign of anyone on the stairs. 

Naturally when Cadfael finds his way back to the walkway, Beringar is gone. Apparently his resemblance to a snake doesn't extend to dozing happily in the sun.

And, naturally, no one saw him leave.

Cadfael sits back down and considers his finds. Casting a revealing spell doesn't bring forth any words on the paper, but that doesn't mean they aren't there. The petal, on the other hand, hides no secrets. In the sunlight it's almost completely translucent, the ghost of a petal — and he knows what kind of plant it came from.

He closes his fingers around it as a shadow falls over him. "Cadfael." If Gilbert saw the petal or has any knowledge of it, he doesn't show it. His lips twist into a bitter smile. "Your new friend is duelling Godric now. In the East Courtyard. I thought you'd like to know."

*

This time, it's purely for fun. Though Cadfael's heart is tight and heavy as he enters the East Courtyard, he feels the festive atmosphere among the students gathered there and finds himself relaxing.

If the children are comfortable watching their teacher and his guest as though they are travelling players performing for their amusement, Cadfael should do no less. He happily settles in to watch the show.

It's a good one. 

Age has taken some of Godric's legendary speed and reflexes, but none of his power, and he has near an extra three quarter of a century's worth of experience to draw on. Beringar is fast, and just as slippery as Cadfael would've expected. No attempting to stand his ground this time; he turns aside what hexes he can, shields against others with brute force, but he also dances back, dodges, disappears from view behind Bedazzling and Disillusionment Charms. Their spells flash back and forth and splash against the protective charms raised around the courtyard. Godric has a wide, fierce grin on his face, and when Hugh eventually — inevitably — loses, he does so with laughter in his mouth.

And some blood, because Godric may have been holding back, but not by much.

Cadfael isn't concerned. He'll live. And he's likely to have taken worse from his master over the years.

Godric reaches down and tugs him to his feet. Beringar notices Cadfael amongst the crowd and shoots him a gory grin. Godric pats him on the back companionably and cleans him up with a distinctly non-medically approved charm. Edmund would be appalled.

Or perhaps he would forgive everything for how happy Godric looks.

Cadfael feels a flicker of discomfort. Beringar is playing his own game; whatever it is, whether he intends harm or not, allowing him free rein to finish it could be risky to a great many things Cadfael cares about.

He's about to join them when he sees Robert pushing through the crowd, face alight with grim anticipation. He feels his heart clench in his chest. And Robert opens his mouth and confirms Cadfael's worst suspicion.

"Ivo Corbière, esteemed Hogwarts Potions Master, has succumbed to his wounds — and to the Dark curse that inflicted them." He makes no attempt to inform Godric in private, just delivers the announcement to the whole courtyard. And the way his eyes linger on Hugh on the last part of the sentence goes unnoticed by no one. 

*

Dinner that night is appropriately subdued. Godric makes a short speech in memoriam before the meal, for once wearing his nine decades of life like weights rather than armour. The students are stunned and gloomy. 

There's only one topic of conversation.

Beringar's self-assurance is as good as a Shield Charm, proof against every suspicious look and whispered comment. He sits by Euan, the Arithmancy Master, and has a quiet, light conversation with him. Cadfael studies him in silence from further down the teacher's table. 

The rumours are ridiculous, Cadfael doesn't believe them for a second.

But still, he needs to know.

He invites Beringar to meet him at sunset, and as they walk together in the cool evening light, sharing stories and wrapped in midge-repelling charms, Cadfael thinks of Mark's scared eyes and light footsteps on creaking stairs. 

Beringar gets him talking of fire spirits trapped in lamps and vast tent cities that could be gone by morning and wizards riding on swords. And he's free with his own life in return. Cadfael has never found the Forbidden Forest frightening, even if he acknowledges its very real dangers, but every aspect of it becomes less foreboding when laughing over Beringar's lively description of being left alone to clear a princeling's palace of ghouls or his attempts to catch a beetle caught in a time loop by one of his master's failed experiments.

But he can only avoid the questions so long. "I remember this tale," Beringar says, as the stars come out in the sky and the shadows beneath the trees lengthen and darken. "I don't intend to be easily lost in the forest." He tests the muddy ground beneath his boots. "Or swallowed by the swamp."

Cadfael casts a wand-lighting charm. As he turns to face him, Beringar steps back, wary.

"You said you heard the sound of a struggle inside the Scribe's Tower," Cadfael says. "The Caterwauling Charms were not triggered at that point? Or when you went into the tower?"

"No." Beringar raises a dark eyebrow. His display of polite bafflement is all but flawless, but his eyes glint in the wand light. "Prestcote must have done it."

"And the door opened for you, no need for force?"

"Yes." There's a touch of wickedness to the curve of his lips. Cadfael is very aware of his wand, sturdy oak in his hand, and wonders suddenly how much use it will actually be to him, should he be wrong.

"Yesterday evening, when you arrived in the Great Hall, everyone was so impressed. After all, none but one of the Hogwarts Four themselves should have been able to walk through those protective spells."

Beringar breaks into a grin. "One of the Hogwarts Four?" He pulls something from inside his shirt. "Or an apprentice to a wizard too lazy and paranoid to alter all of his many many wards for a boy who might only be with him for a few years." The pendant glints in the wand's light, twisting on its chain as he holds it up. "Everyone _was_ impressed. I didn't like to tear down their illusions."

"And of course, having the ability to go anywhere in Hogwarts without anyone's knowledge or permission is an advantage a man like you wouldn't give up lightly." Cadfael feels suddenly lightheaded. And relieved; it seems he was more worried than he knew. Hugh tosses his head and laughs, a joyful sound ringing out in the gloom of the forest, fit to banish any dark rumour.

"Cadfael, let me roll back time and start again, for I fear I have made a _bad_ first impression!"

"Quite the reverse," Cadfael says, warmer than he intends. He turns to walk onwards, and barely hears Beringar's footsteps as he follows him. Feet as light and careful as a stalking cat, he thinks, and remembers the movement on the tower stairs. "Have you any questions you want to ask?"

"What did you find?" Finally. And Beringar may have laughter in his voice, but he does Cadfael the courtesy of not faking idle curiosity. 

It's a good place for him to ask.

Cadfael extinguishes his wand's light. He removes the paper from his sleeve and pulls out the withered petal. The clouds shift in the sky above him. He lifts the petal up, offering it the moonlight, and it catches it, swallows it, becomes a scrap of perfect pure white light. And all around them, amongst the pools and mud of the marshy ground, flowers with petals just like it — or how it should be — glimmer into startling light, burning like stars at their feet.

Beringar stares in honest wonder, and Cadfael feels an uncharitable stab of satisfaction. 

"They're moonsilk orchids," he says. "They're not native to this country, or even this continent. When I came to Hogwarts, I tried to grow them in my gardens — tried being the important word. But, Mother Nature often succeeds where human hands fail." He watches Beringar crouch down, the light clinging to his fingertips as he brushes them over the flowers. He plucks a petal, brings it to his nose. "In the lands I brought them from, they're used in medicine to restore and increase magical power."

"And you have them growing in the woods like bluebells. Amazing."

A breeze rustles through the trees, ruffles their hair and robes, sets the orchids nodding with the faintest chime of bells. And Cadfael hears something else.

Hugh stands up, wand in his hand. He lets Cadfael take the lead without complaint as they move towards the sound, and Cadfael's very aware of him at his back, powerful and battle-ready as Cadfael casts revealing spells at the woods around them.

A Disillusionment Charm melts away from a wattle and daub hut. Its door hangs open, creaking as the breeze nudges at it.

"I _do_ remember this story," Beringar says. He flicks his wand and bathes the whole house in red light, a large enough Stunning Spell to stupefy anyone in the bushes as well as the house. 

And Cadfael feels it — the magic of Hugh's spell being sucked straight out of the air, whipped away into the forest. He hadn't been paying enough attention to how far they had walked from the flowers, or in which direction — to find himself so close to one of _those_ places was an unpleasant surprise.

The night is warm, but Cadfael feels chilled to his bones. "The hut should be safe," he says quietly. Even so, he casts _lumos_ with trepidation as they step inside.

Someone has been abusing Extension Charms. Inside the hut is a workshop as large and well-equipped as any at Hogwarts. Magical diagrams are pinned on the wall, next to a blackboard full of Arithmancy equations Cadfael doesn't try to understand. A bowl of moonsilk orchids sit on a bench beside a cauldron full of what looks to him like a simple infusion made from them. A book sits on a plinth, its pages shredded and dripping with ink. Hourglasses are lined up by another cauldron, this one holding a thick, muddy potion that Cadfael doesn't recognise. He takes a sample of it in a spare vial, and is in the process of casting Scarpin's Revelaspell on it when Hugh sets fire to the diagrams.

Well, Cadfael can't say that is completely unexpected. Though perhaps it should be more concerning than it is. 

How far will an apprentice go to protect his master and his master's secrets?

Lacewing flies, leeches — ghostly images of the potion ingredients flicker over the cauldron. Beringar pulls open a drawer, turns all the parchment inside to floating ash with a flick of his hand. He catches Cadfael's eye, wary, as if Cadfael could — or would — stop him.

"So, perhaps Ivo's claims to be an admirer of Salazar Slytherin's work were true?" Cadfael says, and Beringar's armour is up — Cadfael gets no more reaction than a raised eyebrow and a slow curl of his mouth.

"From a certain point of view," he says, his voice like honey. "I'd say he admired him like the bandit admires the merchant, but that gives him too much credit. The bandit knows what he is." He props his backside against the workbench and lounges there as he levitates little pieces of worked metal out of a basket and vanishes them, one by one. "He wanted to work with my master, can you believe it, Cadfael? Of course, my master is very weak to flattery and Corbière was very charming; if he'd had a single new idea of his own, it could've happened." He grins. "And if he was better at taking rejection, perhaps I wouldn't have got to visit Hogwarts. I should thank him."

"That would be slightly difficult now I think."

Hugh laughs. "True. Now, Cadfael, if you'd please step outside." He's very careful not to point his wand in Cadfael's direction but nevertheless, the threat is there. And the challenge. Cadfael feels his blood rise in response and curses himself for a fool.

That is not how he fights now.

He stands in the warm night air and watches as the hut burns, exhilarated despite himself as the Extension Charms collapse and the hut crumples into itself, the shell and the fire sucked away into the sudden empty space.

"Do you also want to thank Ivo's murderer?" he says.

"Hardly! Killing him made it harder for me to find my master's stolen works. I would've been floundering in the dark without you, Cadfael."

"I doubt that." Cadfael finds himself blinded by the sudden darkness. He looks in the direction of Beringar's amused voice and thinks of sparkling dark eyes and a mouth always ready for laughter. He's very close, and Cadfael feels the warmth of his light, lean body, his breath soft against his cheek as he leans in closer.

"And they set me in place to be blamed for their crime. No, I don't want to thank them. I want to hex them inside out. And I intend to enjoy it." And again, the challenge. And the same reaction from Cadfael's blood. 

And from other parts of his body. He looks at Beringar placidly as his night vision recovers, unconcerned and unrepentant. He's a man, not a rock.

That said, he's not exactly displeased when Beringar steps back.

"Master Euan said one of the students brought an impossible equation to him to finish. An equation involving —" Beringar waves his hand lazily at where the hut had one been "— a subject my master was researching. His name was Evrard Boterel. He was Corbière's accomplice and, I should imagine, we need look no further for his murderer."

Now, is he lying or has he been lied to?

"And what of Master Euan?" Cadfael says mildly. "He's seen this equation. He knows what your master was researching. What will you do about him?"

"I _did_ make a bad first impression," Beringar says ruefully. Then he frowns and casts a Lighting Charm. "Can you see that?" He starts to move towards the bushes—

"Stay right where you are."

Beringar stops, alert to the alarm in Cadfael's voice.

"I see it." Just a few feet away from them, the moss and ferns of the clearing floor give way to bare earth like dry white ash beneath trees reaching for the sky like silvery skeletal fingers, just a few crinkled bone-dry leaves between them but somehow still alive. Trees and soil alike are bright in the moonlight — and so the crumpled dark shape lying amongst them draws the eye very effectively. "Stay where you are," Cadfael says again. "You of all people do not want to approach that spot." And neither do I, he thinks ruefully — but if that is a person…

He transfigures a fallen branch into a hooked pole and moves towards the edge of the clearing. The border between dead ground and living seems sharply delineated, but he knows it isn't that easy, and though he stops before he passes it, he is unsurprised to feel the cold prickling on his skin, the strength bleeding from his limbs. He stretches out the pole, manages to hook it on the clothing — a robe, gods, it is a person — and tugs. 

Cadfael knows his own strength — though his life is less physically demanding than it once had been, and his body older, he is no weakling. But now his arms shake and cold sweat breaks out on his brow, and he feels so weak —

He hears a light footstep behind him, and sudden alarm gives him a flood of strength. " _Stay back_ ," he orders, and — finally — hauls the body free. 

Hugh catches him as he stumbles. Between them, they each grab an arm and pull the man fully into the clearing. 

Barely a second or two within range of the dead ground's effect has Beringar trembling. "Are you all right?" he demands, rubbing his arms as if he's trying to get warm.

"Better than you, for all I was there longer." Cadfael supposes an explanation is in order. "This forest is old, possibly as old as mankind, and it has many dangers. Amongst them are these… _spaces_. The centaurs describe them as scars in the world, from a long ago battle between Dark wizards. Scars that need magic to heal. They are healing. And I'm told there are fewer of them than there were even thirty years ago. But they remain lethal, desperate for magic — and maybe more." He manages a wry smile. "And so the forest is off limits to the children." 

The tip of Beringar's wand touches his forehead, and he feels his thoughts sharpen, a fog lifting that he hadn't even noticed until it was gone. The wand is touched to Cadfael's neck, his chest, each knee, run lightly along his arms from collarbone to fingertips — and everywhere it goes, energy and strength floods through him with all the power and relentlessness of a rising tide. His breath catches in this throat, his blood pounds in his veins — and Beringar watches his face, completely serious for once. "Wouldn't it have been better for me to retrieve him?"

" _No_. The stronger the magic, the more _life_ the dead place has to consume, the faster it does so. You'd be a fine treat for it." Beringar's mouth twitches into a smile. The euphoria from all that new strength and energy is a powerful thing; Cadfael is no longer that young wizard looking on the world as a wonder to be explored and a feast to be devoured, but he still reaches out —

— and claps Beringar on the shoulder. He is no longer that young wizard. And he has a duty of care to things other than himself and his own wants and needs.

In life, the man at their feet was a big man, tall and probably burly, but the dead spot takes its toll. His hair is white, his skin is like paper pasted directly over his bones, but he's still relatively whole. He can only have been in there a day or so; in a week it would be as if he never existed.

There are no Muggle settlements within over a hundred miles in any direction; he has to be a wizard. And the chances of his death not being related to the forest workshop and the wizard — or wizards — using it are very small.

"As far as I know, none of our teachers are missing, and we would've heard from Hogsmeade if any of the villagers were." Cadfael casts a Levitation Charm on the man. "We need to take him back to the castle."

They make their way back through the forest. Beringar picks one of the moonsilk orchids and examines it as he walks. And whistles softly, a surprisingly sweet sound but one not entirely appropriate right now.

"There's something you should know," Cadfael says, "if you don't already know it. Evrard Boterel was expelled from the school just before Midwinter."

Beringar's smile is sharp and hard and not amused at all. "I know. I asked one of the children where I could find him. And you can imagine my surprise at the answer. I intended to ask Euan a few more questions, but then you offered me a moonlight walk in the woods and how could I say no to that?"

Cadfael studies him thoughtfully. Why go to the trouble of telling a lie so easy even Hugh, who knows very little about Hogwarts or its inhabitants, can uncover it with one question? Why would Euan risk — no, ensure — a known Dark wizard's wrath for no obvious reason? Only Cadfael's 'walk in the woods' kept Beringar from his door…

The sound of a flute and youthful voices raised in laughter and song drift through the trees. 

Cadfael hurriedly transfigures a casket around the dead man and casts Disillusionment Charms on it. And yes, covers it with a rock, just to be sure — and just in time. A girl and a boy push through the bushes in front of them, hand in hand and eyes only for each other.

The boy's laughter cuts off with a squeak as he notices the presence of his Herbology teacher and the school's notorious new guest.

"There's no privacy here, Elis," Cadfael says kindly. "Find somewhere else. Away from the forest," he adds as they nod frantically and run.

He follows the music. It's only days away from Midsummer and the dawn light is already brightening the sky behind him as he steps out from beneath the trees, Beringar at his heels.

What appears to be at least half of Gryffindor House is on the edge of the lake. The older half, which is something, but… Broomsticks soar overhead, students play and dance on the grass and splash in the shallows (and two particularly adventurous boys hang from the tentacles of a squid). The music is coming from the ship, where the sailors lounge on deck and shout encouragement to the dancers.

Cadfael looks around, searching out two boys he _knows_ will be there.

"This is _not_ our fault," Edwin says. "Well, perhaps we suggested the midnight feast, but…"

"Isn't it your potion?"

"Yes, but we didn't make this much!"

"And Master Edmund said the curse was a mess, 'an unholy meeting of disciplines', and it was safest to leave it to wear off rather than trying to reverse it."

Cadfael sees Gilbert approaching across the grass, Robert on his heels. He claps his hands together and casts _Sonorus_. "Back to your dorms!"

Of course, they don't _want_ to go back to their dorms, which presents a problem.

*

After the minor battle at the lake, the whole castle is awake and rather more hive-like in its bustle and activity than is usual for dawn on a Saturday morning. Euan isn't in his quarters, or his office. Cadfael tells Helga about the man left in his makeshift casket and they go to retrieve him. 

Despite his misgivings, he leaves Beringar alone to continue the hunt. When he comes back, his Finding Spell still isn't locating Euan, and Beringar has disappeared. Again. Cadfael needs to put a Tracking Charm on him. 

And it doesn't help that he keeps wondering about Euan's apparently careless lie. Did he _want_ Hugh to track him down? Surely he would come out the worse in that particular confrontation? 

He goes to his workshop amongst the greenhouses and its peace and quiet. Oh, insects buzz about the plants and some of the plants rustle as they move and occasionally make a crunch as they chew on an insect or sometimes each other, but there's no other place in Hogwarts so restful and so stimulating of thought. And he needs to think.

But he can do so while he identifies the potion from the hut. He knows the ingredients — he can work backwards from there. He looks at his precious herbals. Of the herbs used in the potion, knotgrass is common and used in so many ways it seems pointless to look it up, but fluxweed is more exotic, brought from faraway Vinland by Norse witches. So the _Shennong Bencaojing_ will not help him, and neither will Diocles of Carystus. 

The door rattles as someone thumps on it. He doesn't jump, but it's a close thing.

When he opens it, he's relieved to see Hugh Beringar — if rather concerned by his messed up hair and wild eyes.

"I hexed your Master Gilbert," Beringar says flatly. "I begged Godric Gryffindor to reconcile with my master — on my knees — and called him a cowardly, irrelevant old relic when he refused me." There's a touch of horror in his voice. "And I tried to hex him too."

"Edwin and Edwy's potion?" Cadfael reaches out to draw him into the room — and hesitates, arm outstretched. Hugh's hair and shoulders are wet.

"What felt like a half a cauldron of it! I didn't see who tipped it on me — I was going to look, but then Prestcote decided to hassle me." He comes through the door, careful to keep his distance from Cadfael. "Don't worry, I won't pass it on to you. It seems I'm a coward and don't wish to know what you truly think of me. For myself, I do admire you greatly and find you—"

" _Silencio_."

Beringar touches his mouth, and his eyes have never been so eloquent — startled, grateful, _amused_.

"Where's the victory in having you spill all your secrets in such a way?" Cadfael says, his voice hopelessly warm. "But I do have one thing I want you to help me with." He shows Beringar the scrap of paper he found in the Scribe's Tower. "If we presume this is from your master's papers, how do we see what's written on it?"

Beringar reaches out, spreads his fingers over the paper — and Cadfael remembers the burning diagrams in the forest hut. But the paper blooms with words rather than flame.

Cadfael was expecting equations. He was _hoping_ for some convenient clue that would make everything clear.

**_cultivating weaklings. Make your quill forever kind and hopeful. The book will be stern and fair._**

Hugh meets his questioning gaze and shakes his head. He doesn't know what it means. But he is sprinkling droplets of the Loose Lips potion about himself.

Cadfael takes up his wand and orders him well away from the workbench, the book cabinet and the drying racks. 

" _Aguamenti. Scourgify_."

Hugh sheds his soaked robes, lets the Scouring Charm briefly attack his hair and face and neck and chest, then flicks his hand and ends the charm. And stands there shivering, wearing nothing but his voluminous shirt, an unnecessarily complicated set of legwear, and a certain amount of forlorn dignity as the pink bubbles dissolve and pop around him. 

His skin is rosy where the charm scrubbed at it. And golden everywhere else, the warm colour of it visible even through the fine linen shirt now plastered to his body.

Cadfael casts the Scouring Charm on the workbench and sits back down. Since the paper failed to offer enlightenment, his hopes ride on finding Euan. He'll cast the Finding Spell again —

He doesn't have the chance to even pull in his stool. Beringar is suddenly there, between him and his work, arms crossed over his chest, his perfect round backside propped on the worktable. Not touching him, not yet. Not quite.

Without his heavy woollen robes — winter robes, for a Scottish summer — he's shown even more slender. Slender, but not fragile — those lean, lithe muscles are whipcord strong. And tense, right now. As tense as Cadfael must be, by the stiffness in his muscles and the way his wand creaks between his fingers.

"You're dripping water on my table," he says mildly, and watches a droplet of water slide down Beringar's long golden neck with an avidity that perhaps shouldn't be the surprise that it is.

Hugh raises his eyebrows, as if to say, _and who cast the Water-Making Spell?_

He shifts on the table, moves to all but straddling Cadfael's knees, so close Cadfael can feel his warmth, but not touching still. Holding the curse back, keeping it to himself. For now. Cadfael finds himself thinking of a hawk, holding back and giving its prey a chance to escape. Beringar blinks away the droplets of water caught on his long eyelashes and narrows his eyes. Their dark depths are lit with mockery — but in which direction is it aimed?

As it so happens, Cadfael has never thought of himself as prey to anyone. 

He reaches up to touch, just a brush of his fingers along Beringar's jaw —

The curse hits him, like a perfectly aimed lance to a shield. Perhaps at another time it would creep up on him, some slow crumbling of his common sense and all his ideas of propriety, but he is already aimed, like the lance. His mind is already full of what he wants, what he wants to do, and the gentle touch turns into gripping Beringar by the scruff of that glorious neck, drawing him down from the table, into his lap, to touch, to kiss, to take.

He sees the startled delight naked on Beringar's face and is completely lost.

*

Outside the window, the morning sun has long given way to an afternoon of rain and cloud so low it's become a blanket of fog. Cadfael sits at his workbench in the grey light and summons books from Ivo's study, the calm and precision needed for the Summoning Charm helping his concentration somewhat. The Loose Lips Curse — foolish boys, what a name to give _that_ — has worn off — some hours ago, in fact — but its effects linger in the aches and pains in muscle groups he hasn't seriously exercised in years. And the reawakened enthusiasm for activities he hasn't participated in in years. 

There are scorch marks from Hugh's fingers on the wood of the workbench, he realises, and can't be sure if he's amused or mortified or a little of both. If he used him roughly, it was certainly welcomed, but Cadfael prefers to have some — _any_ — control over himself and his actions.

He runs his fingers over the marks and feels the stubborn heat inside him rise in response.

On the cot in the corner, Hugh yawns and stretches and sits up, letting the rough blankets pool around his waist just long enough to let Cadfael get a good look. Then he gathers them up around himself and shivers dramatically. His grin is that of the cat that got the cream — and the chicken, and the beefsteak. And a pet from the foolish old cook.

"If you're cold, put on some clothes," Cadfael says, more sharply than intended, and turns to his books. He hears a snort of laughter and the rustle of cloth behind him, and curses Beringar under his breath. "You put great trust in me."

"I hexed everyone else I met this morning," Hugh says simply. He sits down by Cadfael at the bench and pulls a book towards himself. It squirms under his fingers, and Cadfael gets the impression that if a book could have a tail, it would be wagging it. " _Magick Moste Evile_? What reading material for a nice herbologist! What are you looking for?"

"Potions using fluxweed."

He finds it in a book by one Gregory of Ravenna, on a page describing a fluxweed-containing Beautifying Potion — just a note in the margin, a casual comment on something that he and some other wizards were working on that makes a chill settle in Cadfael's bones. The copier's note at the front of the book says that the recipes were originally compiled twenty years ago. Time enough for the group to complete and perfect an experimental potion?

He stands up, startling Hugh. "I need you to check something for me."

*

A few minutes later, Cadfael stands by the base of the Scribe's Tower and plans his excuses for if he's seen there. Gilbert's kennel has grown itself an open-roofed exercise area — perhaps he can claim that as his work? Although, if the clouds get any lower, and the fog any thicker, it might be hard for anyone to see him at all, much less recognise him.

The dogs hurl themselves at the walls of their kennel with mindless abandon. He watches as a house-elf pops into view, visibly braces herself, and heads inside. Only for the barking to increase in volume; alarmed, Cadfael puts his head around the door to check on her.

She's fine — though she might not be if she wasn't conjuring up big chunks of steak for the dogs for feast on. 

She notices Cadfael as she fills up the water trough. "Master Cadfael, Sunny is almost done."

"Why are you doing this? Where's Gilbert?"

"Sunny is feeding Master Gilbert's dogs for two days now," she says. "They are biting Master Gilbert." And then she's gone, her job done, leaving Cadfael with some questions — and, he thinks, some answers.

The door of the Scribe's Tower opens and Beringar slips out. 

"I went up the stairs," he says. "All there is up there is a completely un-magical writing desk, sitting all by itself in a bare room. No hidden compartments, no secret doors. Is that what you expected?" 

"We need to get to the ship," Cadfael says.

The fog _is_ getting thicker. By the time they get down to the lake, they can see clearly just a few yards in any direction, and the ship looms out of the fog like a ghost. A bridging spell sparkles into existence as they approach it, spanning cloud as much as water, and Godric Gryffindor appears at the top of it, as regal as a king greeting supplicants, a bag slung across his body, his wand out and pointed at the silent, glowering sailors.

Cadfael sees the golden streaks threading through his white hair.

As if the empty tower room wasn't all the proof he needed.

So Gregory and his friends actually succeeded. They created a potion to transform one person into another, from the bone out, a form of body stealing unimaginable to the likes of Yves and Mark.

"If I'm honest, I expected you sooner," 'Godric' says. "Throw your wands in the lake." 

Hugh tosses his wand into the water with all the insouciance of a wizard who needs neither wand nor words. Cadfael drops his wand into the shallows, and makes a point to remember where it falls. 

"You'll find rope on the bank. And a flask. Drink from it, both of you. Empty it well. And then, Cadfael, you may have the pleasure of tying and gagging our young friend."

The flask is clear — there's no way to pretend to drink. The potion is sickly sweet with an aftertaste of bitter mustard heat. And Hugh offers him his wrists freely.

"Behind his back."

"I don't know my master's secrets," Hugh says calmly, "and he won't move a finger to retrieve me."

"You undervalue yourself, I think," Godric says. "On both counts." His beard drops out in clumps, and he rubs his chin thoughtfully. "And who says that Lord Salazar is the only wizard I can sell you to? Don't look at me like that, Cadfael. You're a wizard of the world, you know that a man does what he has to in order to survive."

"Survive? I think you have always aimed to thrive, Ivo."

Cadfael means to needle him, to get him angry enough to not notice the kind of knots he's tying, but the wizard on the ship just smiles down at him benignly.

"As everyone does, surely!"

"Not everyone steals from the man they admire and runs with their stolen knowledge to the only place in the world where he would never pursue them." He follows Hugh up over the bridge, watching 'Godric''s face change and his mouth twist like he'd tasted something fouler than his own potion. "But of course, Hogwarts had other advantages beyond safety. Amongst the papers you stole were Slytherin's notes for his part of a great collaboration with his fellow founders. A collaboration not as great as Hogwarts itself, but with much more potential monetary reward for the wizard who could duplicate its results. Or steal them." Something jerks about bad-temperedly inside Ivo's bag. "The Quill of Acceptance and the Book of Admittance." 

Ivo forces his face into a smile, awkward and ugly on the handsome face emerging as the potion's effect fades. "The name and location of every witch and wizard born in Christendom — and slightly beyond — for the last forty years — it's quite a remarkable thing, don't you think?"

"You couldn't duplicate the spells, even with poor Euan's help. Of course, how could you? They were the work of the four greatest witches and wizards of the modern age. You couldn't even complete Slytherin's Time Reversal Spell, and that was from the brain of just one man — one man a great deal more brilliant than you."

"I completed it!" Ivo snaps. "The vessel needs to be sturdier, but the spell itself is solid." He sneers. "Being face to face with my own self was an interesting experience, I'll give you that."

"It would have been stranger for you if you were wearing your own face at the time," Cadfael says mildly. "Only the founders can go into that tower without setting off the Caterwauling Charms, so you and Euan went in as founders — easy enough to get hairs, I suppose. At Hogwarts people are so much less wary about these things than they are out there in the world. We found your potion base. Gregory of Ravenna wrote that they were calling the experimental version 'Polyjuice' — did you steal that too?"

Ivo propels Hugh onto the ship with an impatient flick of his wand. It's aimed back at the Muggles almost instantly, but Cadfael saw a couple of them react to the moment. For himself, he stands on the bridge and waits to see what curse he'll have to dodge. Ivo has no particular need to keep him alive. "Little Gregory the Smarmy had so many fine ideas. The potion you took just now was one of his too, his 'Unctuous Unction'. Give it half an hour and I'll be your best friend. And perhaps you'll stop judging me. Come aboard."

Cadfael does, noting every potential weapon and piece of shelter. "It's been a trying few days for you, hasn't it? First Gilbert found your workshop in the woods and you had to kill him. Fortunate for you that you had a way of making people believe he was still alive bubbling away in your hut. Then Hugh here arrived."

"Salazar knows how to hold a grudge," Ivo says.

"And that grudge would only be satisfied by your death." Cadfael finds himself looking at Hugh, who gazes back, steady and proud.

"Indeed. I thought it was better to kill myself off before Beringar here got the chance to do it. Do it right and I could discredit him enough that when he disappeared with the Book and Quill, no one would ever consider another culprit. And they won't, you know." Ivo pats Hugh on the head almost fondly. Hugh bares his teeth around the gag and jerks away. "They won't think of experimental potions and time travel. They'll remember you standing over 'Ivo's' body and hexing 'Gilbert' when he disturbed you — and the way the Hogwarts wards parted before you like water — and wonder how they ever gave you the benefit of the doubt. Stay where you are, Cadfael," he snaps, Cadfael's slow drift towards him finally noticed. "Muggles, get the ship ready to sail." 

"The body in the Infirmary _is_ Euan, isn't it?" Cadfael says, and hears the disgust in his own voice. He'd allowed himself to become fascinated by the puzzle presented by those very experimental potions and time travel. "There are no more bodies for some poor soul at Hogwarts to stumble upon?" Ivo laughs at him. "Was Euan even your accomplice?"

"In a manner of speaking. The Imperius Curse is a remarkable thing too, don't you think?" Ivo says to Hugh, who backs up against the side-planking of the ship and glares at him with scornful black eyes. "How many times have you used it in the past few days?" Those eyes flick to Cadfael, all challenge, no guilt or pleading, and he knows the answer to that question.

"Not once, I should imagine," he says. "I can't speak for Godric, Rowena or Helga," or perhaps the Muggle sailors, the way they're watching Ivo, "but I just came to like him. No Dark Arts involved." He studies Ivo. "Did you wonder about those rumours too?"

"For about five minutes total." Ivo catches hold of Hugh's short hair, drags his head back to look at him as he hauls him close. "No offense, Cadfael, but his liking for you was a little clue. Salazar Slytherin would not give the likes of you the time of day. Or rut with a mudblood like an animal."

Cadfael's painstakingly tied knots pull apart just as they're intended to as Hugh gestures at the surface of the lake. And for all he may usually disdain spoken incantations, this one he does his best to sound around the gag.

"Im-pe-ri-o."

The squid rise from the depths.

Their tentacles reach out through the fog. Hugh rips himself free, leaving strands of his hair still clutched in Ivo's fingers as he turns to face this new threat.

Within moments, the ship is wrapped in writhing tentacles. Cadfael finds his wand thrust into his hand by one and thanks the squid automatically. But then it's falling away as the ship lurches upwards on a great tower of water, away from the lake, away from the squid. He clings onto the mast as vertigo grips his stomach and the ship plunges back down, Ivo's spell failing as he has to defend himself himself from Hugh's curses. How much of the moonsilk infusion has he been drinking, Cadfael wonders with dawning horror, as Ivo throws himself over the side, onto another conjured bridge. He throws curses at both Hugh and the squid as they renew their attack and Hugh charges after him, out over thin air.

The bridge soars over the forest, barely above the tops of the trees, disappearing into the low clouds, and Cadfael looks at its course and feels the breath catch in his chest.

"May I buy that carpet?" he asks the Muggle captain. That man throws a startled glance at the carpet in question, sticking up from the trapdoor to the hold, soaked through with water.

"You can have it," he says. "Consider it a gift."

It takes altogether too long to enchant the carpet, but it's worth it. As Cadfael rides it, chasing after the flashes and sounds of spells diffused through the thick fog, he gets glimpses of the glittering bridge. And he sees it start to collapse, breaking into points of light to be snuffed out by the suffocating clouds.

A deathly silence falls over the forest. And Cadfael urges the carpet to extra speed. All of a sudden he sails out of the fog into a patch of clear air, bare treetops beneath him, and he knows _exactly_ where they'll be.

And he'll carry Hugh out of it on his back if necessary,

Ivo used the dead spaces to murder Gilbert. Why wouldn't he reach for the same weapon again?

But he seems to have miscalculated this time.

Cadfael feels the carpet shiver under him as it passes over the skeletal trees, as sensitive to the wound in the world below it as any human. He studies the forest with desperate focus.

Where are they —

His heart leaps as he sees Hugh clinging to a branch, and below him, Ivo on his knees at the foot of the tree. 

Only a few feet away, the bare earth gives way to green moss. If Ivo's determined and strong, he could get out of the space before it's too late —

Moving as though he's covered with weights, he lurches to his feet and points his wand at Hugh. "Give me the book," he says.

Cadfael notices the bag slung over Hugh's shoulder. How he got it is unimportant — what is important right now is the sheer amount of magic in it. No wonder the dead space is going easy on Ivo. Hugh looks up at him, his eyes bleak and hard. Cadfael has a moment when he wants to tell him to drop the bag. Throw it at Ivo, let him have it for the short amount of life he would have left.

But the Quill of Acceptance and the Book of Admission are the heart of Hogwarts, the way to safety and a magical education for Muggle-borns like Mark, dozens of them so far and maybe hundreds or thousands of them in the years to come. They're irreplaceable.

"Drop the bag," Ivo shouts, swaying on his feet.

"Get yourself to safety," Cadfael tells him — tells them both, as he reaches out his hand to Hugh, inching his way along the branch towards him. He forces the carpet lower; its threads start to unravel as the spells keeping it aloft do.

Hugh reaches out, the bag in his hand.

"After all this?" Ivo can't shout now. He's on his knees again. "I won't… leave… with nothing…" His arm is weak, but the motion of his wand is completely right for the spell he casts.

Cadfael has only seen the Killing Curse up close a handful of times in his life. Each time has seemed worse than the last, and this one surely tops them all, Hugh silhouetted by nightmare green as he all but topples off the branch to dodge it, to grab at Cadfael's hand.

But he catches that hand, and if he's too weak to hold on, Cadfael isn't. He holds on tight, feels Hugh's long fingers curl loosely around his sturdier ones, and holds on tighter as he hauls him on board the fraying carpet, pulls him into a desperate hug, presses a fervent kiss to his forehead. He holds on tight and doesn't let go. 

*

The whole school shows up to wave the Muggles off to their next destination. Yusuf, their captain, has big plans, the ports of India and beyond calling him, and Cadfael wishes him all the best — and feels less jealous than he would have expected.

As the lake closes over the ship's masts and the children start wandering back up to the school, he lingers and watches as Hugh does what he calls his 'daily grovel'. 

He lays out a selection of food on the bank — fruit and eggs and meat and even bread — and makes a graceful obeisance to the squid poking their heads up cautiously from the water. Cadfael notices the depth of bow with amusement. Hugh didn't summon up a fraction of that respect for Godric, Rowena and Helga. Perhaps they should have withheld their forgiveness as the squid are doing.

And, if Cadfael understand correctly, as Salazar Slytherin is doing. Though what Slytherin has to reproach his apprentice for, he's not sure. Hugh did everything asked of him. Slytherin's secrets are safe, the man who dared steal from him is dead. He should be pleased.

"You saw the griffon?" Hugh says, watching the squid pick through the offerings.

He did. He also saw Hugh petting the great ugly thing, the vulture tilting its head to have its feathers scratched while every student in the Great Hall stared in wonder and horror.

"Whatever you've heard, I am not cast out. I am ordered to present myself at my master's hall in two days, ready to assure him that I've retrieved or destroyed all his stolen notes."

Cadfael doesn't ask him if he wants to. He doesn't ask him to stay, just a while longer. Lives touch, lives part — it's the way of the world as he knows it, and no bad thing. Truly.

Hugh sprawls on the bank, tilting his head back to look up at Cadfael with a smile playing on his lips. "And if I can't give him those assurances, then I'm to stay here until I can." He casts a warming spell on himself — and then a drying spell as one of the squid splashes water on him. And Cadfael never thought he'd live to see the day when he had fellow feeling with a cephalopod. Or feel gratitude to Salazar Slytherin.

He sits beside Hugh, close enough that the squid will have to splash them both. Close enough to feel the heat of his body, and to wish they were in a more private place. "Hogwarts is a large castle," Cadfael says, "full of potential hiding places."

"It is." Hugh flashes his strong white teeth in a wolfish grin. "And he built most of them. It could take years to search, especially if I have to teach classes on the side."

"Truly a hardship," Cadfael says solemnly.

"I think you could easily make it worth my while to bear it. If you put your mind to it."

"I'm flattered you think me so entertaining." And it's a challenge he'll take. Gladly.


End file.
